Anticlimactic Halloween News and a Ghost Story

Guess what?  Halloween night was sufficiently uneventful for me this year, which was a complete sigh of relief.
-Sigh-

If you missed my first post, and are wondering why anyone could possibly dislike Halloween, you should catch up: Introduction to Van Diesel.

Most of the activities were done on foot, which meant that I got to stay in the garage in peace.  No decorations; no blasting music with the engine off.  Sure, it wasn't complete bliss.  I still had to do my fair share of Halloween driving--being invaded with leather and colored hair gel--but it involved no public display of my insides.  It was boring, yes, but serene.  I'll take that over glitter any day.

Halloween, for me, came early when I was brought along to the Lemp Mansion. It was around 9 at night when we rolled up to the Lemp neighborhood, which didn't scare me because I'm not afraid of anything, but may or may not have made me uneasy.  Sure, stay inside with the door locked, and you'll be fine and dandy--but try being alone, at night, in the dirt outside some old house where 3 people committed suicide, and see how you like it. I mean it's common knowledge that ghosts don't just stay inside the house; the yard is fair game too.

Here's a recap of the details I overheard during the Ghost Tour.  Wikipedia is a godsend, isn't it?

Okay, so the Lemp Mansion was built in 1868, and these Lemp people moved into the house in 1876.  Adam Lemp came from Germany and made his own brewery, using the caves in south St. Louis to store the beer.  The caves run under the Lemp Mansion, which means that ghosts potentially inhabit the ground under our roads!  How's that for creepy? 

Anyways, William Lemp, Adam's son, took over the beer business and lived in that creepy mansion.  When his son Fredrick died, William committed suicide in 1904 in his upstairs bedroom after breakfast. 

William Lemp Jr. continued to live in the house--even after his father committed suicide there--and took over the family brewery.  He lost interest in the brewery after his divorce and when prohibition began, William Jr. simply shut down the plant.   He committed suicide in his office in 1922.  That's two suicides in the same house! 

Even after all of this, Charles Lemp, William Jr.'s brother, moved into the morbid mansion in 1929. Charles lived alone, only with his dog and two married servants.  In 1949, he shot his dog and then turned the gun on himself.  He left a note: "St. Louis Mo/May 9, 1949, In case I am found dead blame it on no one but me. Ch. A. Lemp." That's possibly three ghosts and a dog.

So, when everybody left to go on their ghost tour, I sat there, outside the mansion, eavesdropping on the history.  It was hard to hear, though, because there was a St. Louis University frat party going on next door, which was blasting Miley Cyrus.  You just can't escape those frat guys, can you?  The music was really frustrating to me, so I can only imagine how pissed off those ghosts must have been. 

The groups in the house were given cameras to look for orbs and record the tour.  I got curious about these orbs too, so I looked around for a while.  Believe it or not, I thought I saw something, so I turned on my lights to check it out. 

Orbs in my headlights!  Those little buggers were zooming around everywhere.  Yeah, it could have been dust particles, but I've never seen dust that was so violent and erratic in motion before.  They seemed to fly straight at me.  Either that, or pause and float, then zig zag all over the place like they were running away.  Everybody else caught this same thing on their ghost-hunter cameras too.  Were they trying to show me something?

Right as I was on the verge of discovery, I was interrupted by the group returning from their tour.  I tried to rush us back to St. Louis University, but that might not have helped us much, knowing that both William Sr. and William Jr. went to St. Louis University, along with those terrifying frat guys.  The caves are under St. Louis too, so really there was no where to get away from those ghosts. 

Since I have to drive over those caves on a regular basis, I want to know all I can about those mysterious Lemps.  I'm going to research the best I can, and I'll get back to you with updates.  Maybe we'll go ghost hunting, but that's all for now.

You probably already know me, but...

...this is the blog of Van Diesel, a wonderful white soccer-mom van that is sometimes mislabeled as a shady vehicle. Sure, you may say that I’m getting older, but you know, I think I’m getting better with age.  By now, I’ve gotten my wheel radius and my parallel parking skills down to a fine science. But I will admit that I don’t know how much longer I’ll last, especially the way I’m driven.  With that in mind, I guess it’s time I share my life story with the vast realm of the internet—my memoir, if you will. It is, after all, necessary to create my autobiography, seeing as I am so important and all.

I'm not too thrilled with being a college van.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time in a low-celinged garage, which means I can't really flaunt my abilities as a motor vehicle.  Back in my day, I was racing fancy sports cars, leading cocky teenagers right into their inevitable speeding tickets.  I still love this activity, but since we've gotten a few speeding tickets ourselves, we have to drive like a grandma now to stay out of trouble.  That's alright though; it was bound to happen with all the driving we do.

Right now, my latest project is getting mentally prepared for Halloween.  For me, Halloween is stupid; its just a demoralizing use of gasoline and battery power. In 2006, I carted around a bunch of teenagers still attempting to trick-or-treat.  You're sixteen--give it up already!  We were Homestar Runner characters that year, which left remnants of glitter and paint smashed into my fine velvet.  They decorated me, against my will of course, and put on showcase in a "trunk-or-treat."  I was humiliated with flashing lights, blinking bat-eyes, disco balls, cobwebs, etc.  I had pumpkins and candy rolling around for weeks.  Embarrassing, no? 

It always seems that I am volunteered to do something ridiculous, so we'll see what this one's like. I think I'm going to be a rock star van this year, which could go either way.  My stellar good looks could actually be hip for this one, granted if done right.  Pictures to follow, I suppose.  But fair warning--blow out my speakers, and just see what happens...